Bay Area census offices to reopen
2020 count is months behind due to delays caused by the pandemic
On Monday, the U.S. Census Bureau will reopen several Bay Area field offices it shuttered amid the coronavirus pandemic, which also put a stop to most census outreach and forced a monthslong delay for the 2020 count.
Starting on Memorial Day, field offices covering most of Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties will reopen to allow census staffers to drop off a questionnaire at any home without a traditional mailing address; that’s mostly in rural areas and places that rely on P.O. boxes.
“We leave it somewhere visible on the property. It’s usually in a weatherproof bag,” said Joshua Green, a media specialist with the bureau. “We want people to
get that physical packet so they know they can still be counted.”
Field offices in San Francisco and Alameda counties will remain closed because they don’t have any households scheduled for the questionnaire packets, Green said. The field office jurisdictions don’t align exactly with county boundaries, so parts of Alameda County are under a reopened office, and parts of Contra Costa County are under still-closed offices.
This portion of the 2020 count originally started March 15, and census workers were able to get through about a fifth of households before operations were paused. There are 11,887 households still waiting to get a census packet in Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo,
SantaClaraandSantaCruz counties, Green said.
The reopenings come more than a week after census enumerators originally were scheduled to start going door to door at households that have not yet responded. That’s not expected to start until Aug. 11, and the deadline to respond to the census has been pushed back toOct.31.Expertshopethe later deadline will help boost response rates, which so far are lagging behind the final self-response rates during the 2010 count.
Assemblyman Marc Berman, whose district includes partsofSanMateoandSanta Claracounties,saidthathe’s optimistic about the count and that although the Bay Area is behind the 2010 rates, organizations working on boosting those numbers have been finding ways to adjust to limitations on outreach because of COVID-19.
“California is a big, bold,
beautifully diverse state, and in so many ways that diversity is our strength,” Berman said. “But when it comes tothecensus,it’sabigchallenge.”
As of Thursday, 70.6% of households in San Mateo County have responded to the census, followed by 69.5% of households in both Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties, 67.3% of households in Alameda County and 58% of households in San Francisco. In California as a whole, 61% of households have filled out their questionnaires, higher than the 59.9% national average.
“Considering we’re the hardest-to-count state in the country, it’s good, but we obviously want to do better,” Berman said.
At stake could be political representation — California is at risk of losing one congressional seat after the 2020 count — as well as billions in federal funding, according
to state Treasurer Fiona Ma. Federally financed programs like food stamps, affordable housing and Medi-Cal are affected by census response rates, she said.
More recently, Ma pointed to the federal CARES Act relief bill that sent money to states to help them cope with the COVID-19 crisis. The California state government got $9.5 billion from the act, with an additional $5.8 billion going to 21 cities and counties in the state with at least 500,000 residents.
“How did they get that number from?” Ma said. “They got that number from the census.”